Asian art exhibit opens new doors

Author: Ian Fleishman

On Friday, Sept. 16, the inaugural exhibition of the Robert F. Reiff Gallery of Asian Art opened in the newly redesigned gallery on the second floor of the Middlebury College Museum of Art. Robert Youngman '64, who discovered his passion for Asian art more than 40 years ago in 1963 while on a trip to the Philippines, is funding the exhibit with his wife Barbara.

Named in memory of Robert F. Reiff, a professor of art history at Middlebury College from 1958 to 1982, the gallery will be dedicated to the College's growing collection of Asian works and exhibit loans from numerous public and private collections. Richard Saunders, director of the Museum, said, "With the opening of the Reiff Gallery, it is now possible to display some of the outstanding recently acquired works from the Museum's collection. We are very grateful to the Youngmans and to other collectors for lending exceptional pieces from their respective collections. With the opening of this gallery, we hope that the Museum will become a destination for those interested in Asia and its culture."

The amassment of the assorted artistic and cultural artifacts of an entire continent may initially sound ambitious at best and culturally ignorant at worst, but the visitor is quickly put at ease by the competent, even insightful, presentation of the pieces displayed. The inaugural exhibition of the Reiff Gallery - "Asian Games: The Art of Contest" -- is a captivating history lesson which traces the origins of games as familiar as chess, Chutes and Ladders, Backgammon and Parcheesi to their origins in ancient Asia. Organized into four categories representing different types of games, elegant antique chess sets are displayed beside depictions of gaming in paintings and prints. The exhibition is also interactive and entertaining, including a hands-on game playing area.

Not only is the gaming exhibit exquisite and ornate, but as Colin Mackenzie, the Robert P. Youngman curator of Asian Art, pointed out observing civilization at play can offer engaging insight into cultural trends in the richly diverse societies of Asia.

"Games are a cultural phenomenon, and not trivial at all," he said. "They are also universal: everyone plays games." Adverting to the history of the game Chutes and Ladders, he added, "It says a lot about a society when a game is centered around the themes of temptation and evil."

One display shows how the original Indian game representing the quest to attain Nirvana was adapted by British colonials into a school game with scholastic achievement as the aim and canes replacing snakes as a reminder of potential corporal punishment. More interesting still, perhaps, is a Chinese variation in which the goal was bureaucratic ascension from the lower to the higher ranks of society and administration in government. "This also says a lot about Chinese society," said Mackenzie.

The artifacts presented span a history of over 2000 years, from roughly 200 B.C. to the early twentieth century. The geographical area covered is equally immense, with works on display from China, Japan and Persia. The traveling collection, which includes contributions from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Royal Asiatic Society and other institutions, has already been presented by the Asia Society in New York and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington D.C.

While on the whole the exhibition presents a fascinating, informative and well-organized reflection on eastern cultures, the western viewer is constantly aware of his own distanced perspective. "The main goal is to represent culture and, to a lesser extent, technology, through art," said Mackenzie. President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz echoed this sentiment, saying that as Asia "becomes more and more visible to Americans due to its demographics and expanding role in the global economy, it is important to recognize that for thousands of years it has been home to innovative civilizations and the originator of many technological innovations."

Although the tone of this attempt to assess cultural superiority may come across as a bit odd, the exhibition itself is a brilliant representation of the technological prowess of the Ancient East. Highlights from Middlebury's collection of Asian Art include an example of printing which predates Guttenberg by some six centuries and a work of porcelain which can be traced to the Ming Dynasty. "In some respects, Asia was more advanced technologically than the West," said Mackenzie. "At the same time that these porcelain pieces were created, in the West they were still eating out of wooden bowls." Cultural comparison aside, the artwork on display offers an enthralling glimpse of Asia and its diverse societies of the past two thousand years.